Force India challenge Perez penalty

Force India have appealed the five-place grid penalty handed to Sergio Perez following the race in Canada.

The Force India driver had been battling for a podium position with the Williams of Felipe Massa on the last lap of the Canadian Grand Prix with Perez in fourth and Massa, the fastest man on the track in fifth.

Perez had been battling for the race victory only a few laps before, but had been struggling with brake issues, whilst Massa had relatively brand new tyres and had previously been catching the race leaders by around two-seconds per lap.

The two collided going into the first corner, with Massa clipping Perez’s rear left wheel. The two cars smashing into the wall at 27G narrowly missing the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel.

Both drivers were later released from hospital after precautionary checks and neither suffered any injuries.

Video footage of the incident appears to show conflicting arguments. Aerial shots of Perez clearly show that he hasn’t followed the racing line of Sebastian Vettel only a few yards in front of him, but if he has braking issues he may well be attempting to take a cleaner line from the dirty air of Vettel which would be cooler for temperatures.

That said he also appears to be turning early into the corner, possibly defending his position despite the obviously increased speed of Massa.

But one on-board screen shot of Massa appears to show him fractionally turning right towards Perez just before the impact.

Obviously the Canadian race stewards have access to a lot more information, data and images than us spectators at home and they adjudged Perez to be at fault, hitting him with a five-place grid penalty for the Austrian Grand Prix despite not waiting to hear from Perez as he had been in hospital.

Force India are now set to appeal the decision ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix.

‘We believe we have enough evidence to prove I did nothing wrong,’ said Perez to the BBC.

However Massa believes that Sergio Perez is dangerous and needs to take responsibility for his errors, telling Sky Sports: ‘You cannot believe when somebody gets so many penalties and is causing so many problems, you cannot believe. I will not trust him any more, definitely, If you know their history, most of the time it’s the young drivers – especially him – that cause these problems. It’s dangerous.

‘If I made a mistake, I’d be the first to say, ‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry’ like I always did when I made a mistake. But people don’t think in the same way, so I’m sorry for him and I hope he will learn. Otherwise, he’ll pay more penalties in the future.’